2003.04.04
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Sound Collection of the Moment
Had to get a new mail notification sound, because at work people's new computers make the same sound mine was. I found this Clay's Sound Emporium, which is cool (especially the oddities page) because it gives a bit of context to each of the sounds. (If you're wondering, I chose "Special Ed of Crank Yankers" going "I've got mail, yaaaaaaay!" from the "Mail Call" page, though I cut it down to just one exclamation.)
Article of the Moment
Retail Athroplogy...a guy who closely studies what we do when we enter a store, and works with retailers accordingly; we tend to take some yards before refocusing on a store we enter, we tend to turn to the right, woman stop browsing if they're touched or bumped from behind, etc. (Note that the article is from 1996, so when it talks about these difficult days for retail, it's not what you might be thinking economy-wise.) It's a little scary, not not too bad. I'd like to find out where Mo and I would fall in one of the "typing" systems mentioned in section 4.
Arts and Crafts of the Moment
3.5" floppy disc origami! Well, sort of. Make the Starship Enterprise! I guess if you made 6 of these, you could then use the plastic shells as the basis of your own Borg cube. And you could probably think of something geeky to do with the black shiny circle part, call it a small moon or new type of weapon or something.Linguistic Sidenote of the Moment
A woman at work who moved here from Pittsburgh is amazed at how often New Englanders say "I'm all set." I think usually it's the response to "Do you need anything?" but I hadn't noticed how often I use it. Kind of a funny little phrase, actually.